


Psalm 23:4

by Nighthaunting



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Priests, Catholic Guilt, Gen, M/M, Mutual Pining, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Roman Catholicism, based on that ordained priest mccree headcanon, don't ask the fic tries to explain, everything is complicated (tm), jesse is mexican/navajo/scottish somehow, jesse mccree professional sinner, my headcanons about jesse's childhood, when jesse called the blackwatch playbook 'his' playbook in train hopper
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:53:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7375243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nighthaunting/pseuds/Nighthaunting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse McCree has been and done a lot of things in his life. </p>
<p>Gunslinger. Outlaw. Hero. Priest. </p>
<p>He's never been able to really leave any of them behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me._

One of Jesse McCree’s earliest memories is the sound of a ringing church bell. He remembers his mother sighing as she tried to flatten his hair into a more respectable shape before his father came in to remind her they were going to be late. Not just one memory but a constellation of sunday mornings linked together in his mind; forming a familiar shape. 

James McCree is a monolith in Jesse’s memories: tall and broad and perpetually sunkissed. A day laborer and town handyman all in one. An occasional gambler who taught Jesse to play poker with a straight face; and took Jesse off into the badlands sometimes to camp out at night in the bed of their truck; and steadied Jesse’s hands on their family rifle until he could shoot each of the distant line of rusty tin cans every time. Jesse remembers the soft wave of his father’s hair beneath the brim of his hat, the crunch and scuff of his father’s heavy work boots. Being sent off to visit his grandmother and grandfather in the Navajo Nation every summer, where his grandpa taught him to ride and his grandma told him every despairing story of McCree men and poor great-great-grandmother who married a scotsman. The smiling crinkle of her eyes and his grandpa’s muffled laughter giving away the joke of her exasperation. Both of their faces broad and bright in the sharp sunlight as they saw Jesse off of and onto the train for each visit; and Jesse always glad to go them, gap-toothed and smiling as a boy. 

His mother Jesse remembers differently. The first thought he always has of her is her hands; strong and calloused and the color of rich earth. His father’s voice low and rumbling saying  _ Araceli, por favor _ whenever she made her place as head of their household clear. His mother’s own voice, accented and rich, calling his name in what was usually a combination of fondness and frustration.  _ Jesse Adán, venga aquí! _ The high arches of her cheekbones and the fine Aztec slope of her nose; the obsidian black of her hair made stark by the red, red ribbons braided through it. Her sharp dark eyes that looked like fired bronze when they caught sunlight, her steady hands wielding a kitchen knife or a garden trowel. Or a broomstick, sweeping a rattlesnake out the door in furious determination. Every afternoon sitting him down at the kitchen table to oversee his doing schoolwork, laughing to herself when Jesse was more interested in the work her clever hands did, and rewarding his completed lessons with a small shred of tender pork as she made their dinner, or sitting down with him for a few minutes to share a piece of fruit. Looking like an angel herself in the delicate white lace mantilla she draped over her braided hair every sunday as they walked to mass; Jesse always giggling at the exaggerated way his father would offer his mother his arm, at his mother’s blush, tangling his small hand with her large one when she held it out to him. 

The Church was never where Jesse expected himself to end up: when he was young his interest was more in the bright colors of the murals on the walls of their tiny town’s own church, and as he grew older he fidgeted his way through mass to get the sunday morning social’s promise of pan dulce and café con leche. He listened to Padre Ramón’s lighthearted exhortation to consider joining the priesthood the same as every other young man in town, but Jesse never took it seriously until he was nearly graduating high school. When the promises inherent in following that path--the diocese paying for his education, a greater spiritual peace, being able to settle--worked with Jesse’s restlessness to prompt him to decide he had a vocation after all. So he went to the counseling and asked Padre Ramón for letters of reference, and stood still at the train station so his mother could tut and straighten his clothes and press a bundle of food into his hands for the trip. 

It seemed backwards to go all the way up to Albuquerque when the seminary he would eventually be attending was in Texas, but Jesse didn’t question it too hard. He filled out his paperwork and made his applications and filed his housing requests at the college he’d been accepted to, and by the time he left for Texas he had the diocese’ blessing and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.

Texas is nice. Different enough that sometimes Jesse aches for home, but nice; familiar. The wide plains he watches drift past on the train remind him of movie nights when he was a child, spooned between his mother and father on the couch. Watching the Man With No Name and all the other old cowboy movies. The sound of his mother’s throaty laugh whenever his father made a bad joke. Jesse loved those movies; the wide spaces matching up with the restlessness he seemed to carry in his bones. If there is anything he appreciates the seminary for, it is the peace. He goes to his classes on Latin and Greek and church history and more philosophy, and attends every hour of silent prayer in the chapel. 

In the dim candlelight, the incense gone soft and smoky and nearly ready to be replaced, Jesse McCree kneels and breathes in and feels himself go absolutely still. It’s a feeling he’s chased, to an extent, both a cure to his restlessness and as a balm to his spirit. His mind settles down and his awareness expands: seeing but not seeing the gentle flicker of the candles, the play of light over the enshrined statue of la Señora de Guadalupe, the tiny billows of the altar cloth as the AC kicks on. Assisting with the mass is strange; saying the words and going through the rituals, carrying the water and the wine and the book. Moving slowly, with a peculiar reverence and economy of motion, in a way he finds so difficult to shake that he just accepts it. 

Jesse McCree is fully ordained a Catholic priest a few months after his twenty seventh birthday. He accepts his blessings, and the gift of a fine silver crucifix. He learns, a few days later, that’s there is already a parish that’s been chosen for him. 

Packing is unsettling, in a strange way. Jesse had slowly been divesting himself of personal possessions since he arrived. The seminary shearing down the number of things he considered ‘essential’ the same way he’d absurdly gained possessions during his time in college. He sells most of his books instead of just giving them away, and saves up the money; that little rainy-day voice in the back of his head not quite drowned out by the tenets of christian charity. He’d never really collected much in the way of clothes, and packs them in his duffle; he only has the one pair of boots; a comb, a toothbrush, and the handful of pictures and keepsakes he’s got. 

The trickiest thing to deal with, more for how Jesse’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to own it in the first place, is the gun. It’s a .22 caliber handgun, a funny little thing that Jesse keeps in a lockbox under his bed, unloaded and with the box of ammo he has for it arranged in the lockbox as well. Jesse picked it up when he was in college, ending up at a 24-hour shooting range late one night, only the range attendant and himself in the tiny gun shop that made up the storefront. He’d been out walking, breathing the night air and trying to tire his mind out; only stepping inside on a whim, remembering when he was young and he and his father would shoot tin cans. A hearkening back to a more peaceful time of life, perhaps. 

He remembers the attendant’s bland attention; paying for range time on a whim, and borrowing the same gun he’d ended up buying. Standing in the range stall with the ear protectors on and hearing his father’s voice as though he was there.  _ Look down the sight. Relax your arms. Breathe deep. _ The quiet that rolled out around him was half-blissful, and he filled the paper target’s heart with lead. Even stopping to reload bullet by bullet was part of the rhythm of the shoot, and Jesse felt the same kind of calm that only came to him again in those hours of silent prayer. He bought the gun, and came back to that same range every restless night to fire mindlessly. Feeling the revolver’s recoil in his hands, jolting up his arms, the smooth whir and click of the cylinder snapping shut. The blank silence that descended upon him soothing away his thoughts until he seemed to stare down the barrel from the center of his forehead; a third-eye glare that made everything align perfectly. 

The trickiest thing to deal with is that Jesse is pretty sure good Padres don’t own guns and wander off into the desert when they’re meant to be tending church. The trickiest thing to deal with is that of all the things in his life he’d found that gave him a sense of peace, the gun and prayer were the two that’d stuck. 

Standing in line at the train station, duffle bag--the lockbox with his gun tucked inside, because he’d dithered until the last moment had come and gone--over his shoulder. Dressed fully in black, cassock buttoning up to the slip of white at his throat, he looks the picture-perfect image of a genteel south-western Padre. And Jesse McCree realizes that for all the time and years he’s spent, for all the prayer and meditation, he doesn’t want to be a parish priest. The realization crawls uncomfortably up his spine, feeling almost like a betrayal. He shifts, looking around the train station: at the people giving him surreptitious glances aimed more at his collar than at him; at the departures board, the name of the place he’s meant to be going--that he’ll spend the rest of his life ministering to, if he goes--seeming to writhe across the board before his eyes.

Jesse McCree steps up to the ticket counter, smiles his best  _ vaya con Dios _ smile, and buys a train ticket as far in the opposite direction of the place he’s meant to go as possible. In the moment before the train begins to move in earnest, shifting under his feet slightly as it prepares to leave the station, Jesse feels a dual flash of guilt and panic. He doesn’t know what he’s doing other than running, but he thinks that he’ll figure it out when he gets to where he’s going. 


	2. Psalm 51

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities . . . Cast me not away from thy presence; take not thy holy spirit from me_

At first it had just been distance he’d thought he’d needed, wandering off into the desert and badlands, but it had grown to more than that. The only sources of peace in Jesse’s life had turned into a gun and a prayer. Sulking through the southwest and Mexico without purpose; stopping at each village chapel to pay his guilty respects to the life he’d run from--his cassock still folded neatly at the bottom of his duffle, because he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away--and hiring up as a cowhand and a bounty hunter and a barkeep to pay to keep going. 

It had gotten to him in the end: the initial fatigue of desperate running setting in, the feeling of foolishness. No one was hunting him. He wasn’t a criminal. But he’d run like one. Like he’d stolen something indefinable from the Church and couldn’t stop moving lest he be made to give it back. Which made even less sense than the running. There was nothing forcing him to do anything. He could remember a dozen lectures at the seminary where each seminarian was reminded that no matter how far into the process they got, if they decided the priesthood wasn’t right for them they’d be free to resign, no questions asked, no debt required. Privately, Jesse thinks that he feels most guilty because he’d believed, up until he was actually faced with the responsibility of doing, that he meant to be a priest. Running is what he can do to make it quiet down, trying to find enough peace in the traveling to forget.

It almost works. Jesse runs: cheap motels or boarding for work or sleeping in barns. He says his morning prayers and his evening prayers and finds a little card with a picture of the Virgin Mary for his wallet. He wears a rosary around his neck, bright glass beads he found at a market, and he makes a silent confession when he pawns his silver crucifix to buy bullets. He has a heavy wool serape and a second-hand hat, and still sometimes when he’s out in the desert at night it gets cold enough that he digs his cassock out of his rucksack and wears it as a coat.

Falling in with the Deadlocks was foolishness of the highest order, but Jesse stumbles into Deadlock Gorge all the same. He’s parched, and so in need of work he’d agreed to play courier to something--he hadn’t asked, and didn’t want to know--that someone--who’d used an intermediary probably told to go out and find the cheapest idiot available, and again Jesse really doesn’t want to know--wanted taken to the Deadlocks. He stops in the doorway of the saloon to let his eyes adjust, and ducks just in time to avoid getting his head blown off. He delivers. He stays for a drink. He gets the second half of his pay and an offer to join up. He says he’ll think about it, going back and forth in his mind while nursing the same slowly-warming glass of beer, until the tiredness catches up with him. Jesse has worn himself down to his bones drifting on the desert wind, and he’s tired of it. The Deadlock gang are sharp and mean as rattlesnakes, but Jesse McCree is already a sinner, and the lure of staying put is too much to ignore. 

He gets a new gun, and a new hat. There’s no one in the gang particularly interested in his past, and Jesse keeps everything but the sparsest of details to himself. What they are interested in is his skill shooting. The new gun is heavier, higher caliber, and Jesse takes it out and shoots the fruit off a cactus and names it Peacemaker. He doesn’t know how to explain that he feels like a hermit come out of the desert. Like a wandering martyr shaking the dust from their robes. He can close his eyes and see a target like he’s staring out from his forehead, with nothing but empty space between the barrel of his gun and their fluttering paper heart. Like when the sun is riding right overhead and the light is so thick it can almost be seen pouring out over the desert; Jesse looking out over a vast expanse of skies a painful blue and shrub and brush and cacti bleached out by the sunlight until they seem to reflect. When the only things moving are the tumbleweeds and his bullets seem so fast they cut the mirages in half. 

There’s no way to explain it so he doesn’t. He works Deadlock jobs, and saves up his cuts of the take. Jesse says his prayers every night and every morning. Whenever he kills, if he has the time, he whispers the Last Rites to their body. Unable to stop himself from staring at the fine misting of blood that accompanies each perfect shot, or to not choke and stumble over the words. To say  _ my sin is ever before me _ in the face of the surest proof of a broken commandment draws bitter water from the well of his heart. Jesse tastes it rather than wine when he manages to go to mass; standing in the vestibule rather than sitting in the pews. He hasn’t taken communion in longer than he cares to think about. 

Blackwatch is better, by the barest of margins. Jesse is aware that he’s a hired gun at best and a criminal at worst. He sits through the debriefings, and gives up information, and has to pinch his thigh to keep from sputtering with uncomfortable laughter when he’s offered a brochure on religious counseling in the stack of paperwork and rehabilitation aids piled on him. He soldiers along quietly, and does the training courses, and assures his new minders that he means to behave himself. The camaraderie of Blackwatch--mostly an extension of the camaraderie of Overwatch itself--is different than the Deadlocks. Less bitter, less self-interested, but still dangerous. 

Jesse can feel himself slowly relaxing, the need to run easing more than it had during his stay with the Deadlocks. He’d been a wanderer still, then, roaming on jobs but having a place to come back to. Blackwatch doesn’t roam, it mobilizes. His first mission is over in less than an afternoon, before he’s packed back on the transport and back at base in time for supper. He’s still a killer, sharp instinct and skills honed and re-honed by life and time and Blackwatch’s training. Being shepherded away from the proof of his kills before he can pay respects is expected when Blackwatch’s shadow hand is meant to never be seen. Jesse starts reciting the Last Rites before he sleeps, for everyone he’s killed and himself as well. 

It’s Ana Amari who finally catches him up short. Calls him out. On living like he’s going to start running again at any time. Like he’s just waiting for death. It shakes Jesse, to think that it can be seen from the outside, and while Ana never asks questions about what exactly motivates him, he can guess that she’s got a better idea of him than anyone he’s met for a long time. 

They sit together occasionally and drink. Talking about nothing personal, and everything in general. One night, just after he’s been discharged from the infirmary after losing his arm but not yet fitted with his prosthetic, Jesse gets more drunk than he’s been since college, and they talk about death and prayer and time. Ana is stone sober and indulging his maudlin, and Jesse looks at her and remembers back to some class of historical religion. Comparison of Psalm 51 to the ancient Egyptian ritual of the Opening of the Mouth. 

Jesse leaves Blackwatch before the end comes, tired of running, tired of putting himself to sleep at night with preparations should his soul flee his body. He watches the fallout from the Swiss HQ explosion on the news from a bar in New Orleans, and is torn between guilty relief that he got out and wishing he’d been there to try and stop things. He’s had his own business to attend to, still an outlaw, with an even bigger bounty on his head than his Deadlock days. Bounty hunting himself seems like an irony, as does hiring out his gun, but the scales have fallen from Jesse’s eyes insofar as his own nature is concerned. He chooses jobs carefully, only accepts things that won’t make him want to run, and scrapes by well enough. 

After a while, finding ease with himself again, hat pulled low, Jesse slinks into the confessional booth for the first time in years. His knees ache on the kneeler for how long he’s there, and the poor Father who hears the long string of his confession is half-disbelieving, but he’s given a penance and absolved of his sins. Or as absolved as he can be, when his penance is to go out in the world and do good works. Jesse almost laughs, at himself mostly, and about everything. Clever priest, giving him the same penance he’d given himself. 

Doing good works is harder than it seems, although he already knew that. Stopping a robbery or a train heist saves innocent people, but Jesse still has to bolt and run so he’s not caught, when he knows that half the time the blame for whatever he’s managed to stop is getting laid on his own shoulders. It’s peculiar, in a way, to leave things better than he found them but worse for himself. Tiring, though, to feel more settled and at peace and still be running. For real now, no matter how many demons he imagined pursued him before.

When the Recall pings off his old Overwatch comm--which he kept, for some reason he can’t quite fathom, aside from maybe that he’d never quite given up the idea that they could make things better--Jesse doesn’t hesitate before deciding to answer, for all that he waits a few days and gets some distance between himself and civilians, in case it might be some kind of trap. 

It isn’t a trap, and Jesse checks with Winston and Mercy and Tracer to confirm it before he accepts. They’re meant to be in hiding, for the moment, the complexity and divisive nature of Overwatch returning being rightfully considered before they announce themselves to the world. They need time: to assemble a team, to settle into a base, to make sure they’re secure. Jesse hops trains to get himself to a port, before carefully hiding his gun, hat, and serape and paying cash directly into a rugged old captain’s hand for a ride on a cargo ship that would drop him close enough to the former Watchpoint Gibraltar to be able to make his way there without attracting attention to either himself or the base. 

He arrives at night, a hazy figure stepping out of the sea fog. He’s given a tour and a hot meal and a room to bunk down in. There are familiar faces and new ones, and they are, uniformly, glad to see him. Jesse doesn’t know how to explain that he feels like a hermit come out of the desert. Like a wandering martyr shaking the dust from their robes. Like he doesn’t have to run anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psalm 51 being the psalm recited during the Last Rites. The parallels between Psalm 51 and the Opening of the Mouth ceremony are actually a thing, for a fun comparative religion bonus.

**Author's Note:**

> So priest!McCree ate me alive, and I wrote this rather than work on actual projects :/ Apologies to anyone upset by this. 
> 
> Please forgive what I've belatedly realized is an unsalvageable fuckening of the timeline re: Jesse's time in Blackwatch/post-Overwatch/Overwatch Recall. 
> 
> I was looking through names for McCree's mom, and realized Jesse would have a middle name. So, his name is Jesse Adán McCree. According to me. As of this moment.
> 
> In general, the information regarding becoming a priest is accurate. Not all diocese pay full expenses, but some do. As an ordained priest, McCree would have received a MDiv (Master of Divinity) from his seminary as a form of master's degree. Philosophy just seemed like the most McCree BA (the other option being straight-up theology).


End file.
